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Allowing Exhaustion

Hi, I’m Lexi! I’m life coach, and a master of gently guiding you to what you already know but have a hard time admitting to yourself. I’m also an expert space holder for your deepest desires and truest heart callings, and I know how to help you create a life where you are not spread too thin. You can connect with me on my blog at www.lexikoch.com and also on Facebook. Click here to get access to 5 Ways to Be Done With Overwhelm TODAY!

It’s been a looooong week. You’ve had extra projects at work and are feeling the February blues a little bit. When you’re not at work, you’re walking the dog or cleaning the house or finishing up that assignment for that class you decided to take on. It’s all so much, but you really do love it all. So much richness in each of the things you do. It just doesn’t leave you with a lot of down time.

You’re feeling exhausted. And you’ve been exhausted for a while now. You bought those fancy bath salts last week and still haven’t found the time to use them. You even went so far as to clean the tub, but by the time that was over, you just wanted to be done with everything and even the bath salts lost their thrill.

What gives?

You look around at all the other people working and living and, they more or less seem OK.

But you’re craving rest and connection.

It’s funny how being exhausted has almost become a status symbol. Most people are hitting the coffee all day or complain about how tired they are from keeping up with this modern life.

There’s little time to evaluate if things are going well or right. The idea of pausing to see if what you are doing is giving or depleting you of energy really has never even crossed your mind.

But there’s that fatigue again. You fall on your pillow at night, so ready to turn it all off and take refuge in rest.

What if you took tomorrow off? No, you couldn’t do that. You’d quickly fall behind… or would you? Is it true that resting more would somehow have you losing out on life? Falling behind?

I want you to know, I get it! I buried myself so deep in work that I fell into bed groaning with fatigue each night and in the morning, I’d shame myself into getting up and getting going. I was using my worst enemy, Comparison, to think about how everyone else was operating, and so I’d drag myself out of bed each morning to my meditation cushion still mostly asleep. But there, right? I worked a very physically demanding job and when fatigue came up, I’d shush it right back down, ignoring the voice of my inner being day after day after day.

I learned a lot from that time about what I don’t want to do anymore. I used that time in my life as a sort of “case study” to see what worked and what didn’t.

Just the other day my son had his four-year-old best friend over, and as soon as she walked in the door, she plopped down on our couch and professed, “I’m tired!” I was totally taken aback. It’s not an act or a phrase I see admitted too often around me. I felt so inspired. Here was this little person who is uninhibited by the “shoulds,” and “have-to’s,” and “but, she’s doing it like this…” Yet in her life, she was tired and that’s just what she was. She allowed herself to be tired for a while, hung out on the couch, and within 30 minutes, a bit more rested, she was playing and giggling.

I dare you to give yourself permission to experience your own fatigue. Or maybe it’s not fatigue but overwhelm or discomfort. I dare you to actually state it out loud using the phrase, “I am tired [insert your very own feeling],” just like my four-year-old friend did. I even encourage you to flop down on the couch as you say it, and let yourself just be in it for a couple minutes. Even if it’s uncomfortable.

As you allow yourself to be what you really are and even to spend time in the discomfort of what you’re really feeling, the possibilities for your life will magnify. You will get to do all of the things you love to do in life but from a place of being okay with yourself while you’re doing them. The most exhausting part of every day is denying our true feelings. When you allow your true feelings, you’ll suddenly find time to use those bath salts, and while you lay in your freshly cleaned bath tub, the dog already walked, work all done for the day, you will get to see how it feels to allow yourself to be tired and how good it feels to take care of that need.